When Ryanair’s chief executive, Michael O’Leary, announced this month that his airline may soon offer in-flight pornography, he told the British tabloid The Sun, “Hotels around the world have it, so why wouldn’t we?”
The flaw in Mr. O’Leary’s logic notwithstanding (hotel rooms have doors; airplane seats are surrounded by eyeballs, some very young), his proposal isn’t so radical. As most any flight attendant will confirm, passengers are already indulging in racy content downloaded onto their phones, tablets or laptops from outside sources.
Beth Blair, a flight attendant and travel writer based in Minneapolis, said she once worked on a flight out of Burbank, Calif., during which an adult-film editor and his assistants began editing footage on their laptops. A child was sitting behind them. “I asked them to turn it off ASAP,” she wrote in an e-mail. “Instead of obliging, they built a private area/tent out of newspapers. Luckily, the volume was turned down.”
Monday, November 21, 2011, 11:00 AM
November 21st, 2011 | 12:37 pm
Also from the story: “Still, many passengers simply don’t know how to behave because the rules are ill-defined and inconsistent, said Kate Hanni, executive director of FlyersRights, a consumer advocacy group.”
Passengers don’t know whether it’s ok to watch porn on an airplane surrounded by other people. It’s a conundrum. They want to do the right thing, but what is the right thing to do when you want to watch porn right now? Hunh.
November 21st, 2011 | 1:55 pm
Doesn’t this constitute sexual harassment of any airline employee who would consider this to make for a hostile work environment? Unless every single employee on board every one of their planes considers this appropriate, it should go for that reason alone.
November 21st, 2011 | 2:19 pm
Airlines, not being arms of government (not even Homeland Security), can set whatever rules they like in this regard. And customers can vote with their dollars, no? (Airlines were already on their way to banning smoking before the feds decided to step in with heavy boots. Oh, well.)
Me, I’d be quite happy to switch to a non-porn flight (or airline) even if I was traveling alone.
November 21st, 2011 | 4:36 pm
All media that can be viewed and heard by everyone on the airplane (large screen at the front of the airplane) should be regulated for the youngest person for whom a ticket is sold.
No R or PG13 movies if there are children aboard.
If the screens are small, there should be family zones on the airplane so that children are not exposed to such garbage.
NO porn (anything past R) should be shown at all…or even legal, for that matter. Science research has shown the harm of it.
If someone next to me was watching porn on his computer or a seat back screen, I would ask them to turn it off and if they did not turn it off, I would spill a coke on their computer or make a note of their seat number and all pertinent identifying data, film their entertainment on a cell phone and sue them for sexual harrassment.
November 21st, 2011 | 7:54 pm
Smoking was banned from planes when people started taking seriously that it polluted the air that everyone was breathing.
Back when passengers seated anywhere could smoke on the plane, a man I know said that he carried an orange and would, if the person seated next to him refused to stop, start peeling it and throwing the peels onto the smoker. That was more persuasive.
Since there is no free food in coach anymore, we have lots of justification for hauling oranges. I would suggest Japanese mikans that peel easily without sharp instruments.
November 21st, 2011 | 10:21 pm
I will love the day you could go on a flight and see something like “Animal House”.
Because of people like you and other ninnies who are offended by the slightest improper joke, the only type of movies shown in-flight are romantic comedies and other types of chick flicks.
November 21st, 2011 | 10:31 pm
“No R or PG13 movies if there are children aboard.”
My question is if they did show R-rated movies, would you stop flying and agree to drive 12 hours to your destination?
It would be just like the TSA and the full body scans. When people figured out that the TSA wasn’t going to back down, and that the only alternative was driving to their destination, they got over the full-body scans very quickly.
November 22nd, 2011 | 7:06 am
I will love the day you could go on a flight and see something like “Animal House”.
Because of people like you and other ninnies who are offended by the slightest improper joke, the only type of movies shown in-flight are romantic comedies and other types of chick flicks.
Would you enjoy being seated next to a really aggressive member of a church that promotes proselytizing?
If we could all be respectful of each others’ values in public – and keep what is controversial or potentially offensive to only those places where such things are appropriate – it would go a long way toward creating a more civil atmosphere.
Unfortunately, I get the impression that a civil atmosphere is exactly what you don’t want. But other than boredom – a lack of anything better to do with your time, perhaps? – why would anyone deliberately want to annoy and antagonize people you don’t know?
November 22nd, 2011 | 8:07 am
The difference between a full-body scan and an R (or X)-rated movie on a plane is that the scan is over fast and can be argued for (not that everyone’s buying it) as a safety measure. The adult movie, on the other hand, keeps everyone on the plane, or at least in its immediate vicinity, in bondage . . . so to speak . . . for an hour or more, for no better reason than the dubious one of entertainment value.
Also, Ryanair is a major source of affordable flights to destinations not easily reached by car from the UK: Ireland, for example. Hard to drive to Ireland from Milton Keynes. Yes, you can choose another airline, but what if the competition decides to compete on that level, too? Non-smoking on planes was well on its way to becoming the new normal, as someone has pointed out, before it was outright banned. “Edgy” is already the new normal everywhere else, including on overseas flights; I can remember seeing the American remake of Little Nikita on some long flight, for example, years ago, and remarking to myself that this didn’t seem an especially family-friendly choice on the part of whatever airline it was. I don’t think I’m a complete fruitcake to suspect that “edgier and edgier” might become the new normal on airplanes everywhere.
And yep, Michael B., I am one of those ninnies who’d really rather not have my children exposed to the slightest improper joke if I can help it, mostly because I’d really rather not hear it over and over again, replayed by my nine-year-old for the entire extended family. I’m funny that way. But then, I hate movies on airplanes anyway and never watch them, even on transatlantic flights. At least, I don’t get the headphones. Little Nikita was interesting in snatches as a silent movie. So if you don’t like the chick flicks, eschew the headphones and lip-read the film, mentally substituting your own dialogue, for ninety minutes of customized entertainment. Or take the book of your choice. Works for me every time.
November 22nd, 2011 | 2:14 pm
I’m with Blake on this one. Whatever happened to a notion of civility, of the common good?
Am I really a “ninny” if I don’t want myself or my children (or children in general for that matter) to be exposed to porn on a public conveyance Michael B? What’s next — advocating for stripper poles on buses?
This kind of “I want what I want and the rest of you can go hang” stuff is getting way over the top. It’s an attempt in the name of some misguided notion of ‘freedom’ to reify an essentially adolescent sensibility.
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